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It's been three weeks since Jason died.
Alfred handled the funerary preparations. Calls to the Mortuary, buying his casket—cherry wood, lined in white silk, a pillow built in. The idea miffed Bruce when Alfred handed him the tablet that displayed the model. A useless notion it is, providing comfort for the dead. They won’t feel the fabric or get stiff necks without cushioned support. It’s only an extra feature to assuage the pain the living feel: to trick themselves into thinking their loved ones are only sleeping in the layers of silt and roots and rock. Bruce had him buy it.
The funeral happened shortly after. Dick, Alfred, and Bruce attended. A small service. None of them uttered a word to one another or exchanged any comforts or touches. Bruce would’ve vomited on the spot. Mentally, he stood halfway under the sun hitting their wool backs and halfway under the harsh rain pelting his suit when he was eight and watching his parents descend to sleep forever too. The emotion unifying his mental dichotomy was the numb, vacuuming hole inside of his chest, a thing he was beginning to fill when he adopted Dick and eventually Jason, how it gapes now.
They’re visiting Jason a week after the funeral. It was Dick’s idea, of course—not because he’s the only one with a heart (Alfred has to operate in similar emotional syncing with Bruce, to Bruce’s shame), but because his response to grief carried proactive and communal measures, something Bruce doesn’t have the heart to train out of him. Like he could in the first place.
Dick dragged Bruce out of the Batcave, donning his suit, and shoved Bruce into his study, telling him to dress. A suit lay on the back of his desk chair. Black jacket and slacks, white shirt, no tie. The bare minimum, but something. Bruce is a cavernous space, containing nothing, but he puts on the suit. For his boy. For both of them.
“Don’t drink either, Bruce,” Dick calls from behind the door. “I can smell it all over you.”
Bruce eyes his desk drawer that holds his Macallan 72. It’s almost an insult coming from him, especially considering each sip of the damn thing is worth more than a grand.
“Quit wearing that cologne,” Bruce says, voice thick. “You smell like a casino.”
“...Shut up.”
Dick brought flowers for the trip. Tulips. White. Innocence, Purity, and Apology, Dick says, and they linger in the rest.
The sky grays over them and mud squelches through the grass and on the sides of their loafers. They smell the putrid and brackish air from the bay. Jason lies in a grave next to Bruce’s parents, and when they get there Dick places a tulip on each of their graves. Thomas and Martha. They never met Bruce’s children—his wonderful children. And now they finally have, and it’s through the acquaintance of dirt. With the earth’s shifting and Gotham’s storms, there’s no telling if his parents haven’t migrated out of their coffins, reaching skeletal hands to lay gently on Jason’s casket, to extend their hellos finally. Bruce never appointed his sons with his last name because they had their own identities and families previously, but also because the Waynes exchange their intimacies, love, and familial bonds, through death. Bruce thought it wouldn’t endanger them if they weren’t bound to one another by blood. He was wrong.
They stand there, and Bruce can tell Dick wants to say something. His hands clasp together in front of him and he grips the bottom one over and over with the other, and the corner of his jaw pops with clenching. Bruce waits, trying to keep the cavern at bay, willing it not to collapse in on itself.
“So,” Dick starts, wobbling on the word, “Jay went skiing that one time with the Titans and me, and he was a natural really—but it was so funny, watching him, ‘cause he’d get so mad whenever we’d tease him about falling down. And I went too far with one of the jokes, right, so Jay—this little kid—starts stomping towards me with his skis that are way too big for him, and he just faceplants.” Dick laughs a little, then sniffles, and laughs again. “I just started losing it, and so did the rest of the Titans, and he was so angry I had to apologize like a million times on the ride home and buy him a milkshake.”
The story goes quiet in the cavern, and Bruce stands there unresponsive. Alfred smiles a little but doesn’t say anything either. They’re more similar than they are different, at this point.
Dick’s lip wobbles, and he wipes at his eyes. “Can someone else please fuckin’ say something?”
“Master Jason was a mischievous young lad,” Alfred says, and Dick looks like he could cry from sheer relief, “almost as mischievous as you, Master Dick. The biggest difference was his eagerness to please.”
“Oh, come on, Alfred.”
Alfred shakes his head. “I’m serious. The boy had a…gentle heart. He liked seeing those he loved happy. He…he was a very kind boy.” Then his eyes mist, and he dabs them with his handkerchief.
Jason would stay up late to work on assignments—a fact he frequently boasted about when he’d show off his report card, beaming. He’d triple-check his gear before they’d leave for patrol because Bruce high-fived him whenever Jason told him. There would be ridiculous games around the house, hand-made gifts for holidays Bruce hadn’t heard of, movie nights with popcorn, and days in Bruce’s mother’s garden, where Jason would maintain the beds with Alfred and he’d beg Bruce to join in. And Bruce would smile under the umbrella that canopied over him, consulting his newspaper, untouched coffee frothing on the table, saying once he finished the crossword he would. But they knew he wouldn’t. The crossword was finished.
If Bruce acted happier, extended his love towards Jason more, got in the mulched beds, and helped Jason plant those fucking petunias, would this have happened? Would Jason have still searched for his mother? Where did it go wrong, where was the exact moment of failure for Bruce that was so catastrophic it led to this? A scathing look, a scolding, Bruce taking away a privilege when Jason played around too much on a mission. What contusion did Bruce afflict on his son that made him feel unloved? If he knew—he could be productive. Mentally barrage himself and analyze it until he opens the liquor cabinet or a pack of Marlboros. Stew in the guilt properly and with intent. A mission. For now, he’s stuck in this aimless pit—which is far too kind for him.
“Bruce.”
He looks at Dick. His other son. Bruce’s already failed him so many times too, it’s a miracle he’s still here.
“Say something.”
Bruce looks at his son’s epitaph, trying to conjure anything. In loving memory, Jason Peter Todd, Son, Grandson, and Brother. It’s unoriginal, an insult to him—but Bruce couldn’t think of anything, his mind static, and he couldn’t bring himself to create a tacky pastiche of better words. At least Jason won’t know. He’d probably make fun of him and write ten different ones that are much better, just to prove a point.
Bruce takes a breath through the diaphragm. “There’s no point.”
“Bullshit.”
Bruce doesn’t respond. He remains in his spot by the will of God, the divine hand fixing him in place. If that weren’t the case, Bruce would be gone. Back in the cave, buried in Jason’s autopsy or security footage, his hands in his uniform. In terms of pain, none of those measure up to this. To stand in judgment.
“Do you even care?” Dick yells. “Can you stop acting like some robot? What’s wrong with you?”
Bruce looks at him.
Dick claws his fingers through his hair and grips at the roots. A tug. Another. “Fuck! What the fuck!”
Dick moves in front of Bruce. He shoves him. Once. Twice. The shoves fill up with their hysteria—Bruce accepting them as punishment, Dick trying to push the cavern out of Bruce, get a reaction so he won’t feel so alone in his agony—and they continue until Alfred barks out a command:
“Enough!” On the precipice of his hysterics, he says, “Have some bloody respect. For God’s sake.”
It stops them. Dick wrings Bruce’s lapels, his head lulls to Bruce’s chest, and he whines, wails out, “Bruce…what are we gonna do?”
The words collapse the cavern. Its force of gravity wracks the body, leaving Bruce shaking, his head tilted back to see the empyrean and contain his tears. He grips his son by the arms and whispers a confession meant only for him, Alfred, and whatever entity did this. He hopes Jason can’t hear down in the dirt. “I don’t know.”
They sink into the mud, Dick sobbing, Bruce gripping him and holding them together. For he is a weak man—a pathetic excuse of a human fettered to his failures—but he is a father, and his family knows the language of grief too well. In this moment, he shields them by uttering the grieving orisons they’ve spoken, praying they won’t ever speak them again.